Living in poverty with their mother in the mountains of Bolivia, 14-year-old Basilio and his 12-year-old brother, Bernardino, work long shifts in the Cerro Rico silver mines, braving deadly conditions to earn enough money to attend school.

The world’s largest garbage village is just outside Cairo. The Zabaleen (Arabic for “garbage people”) recycle 80 percent of the trash they collect, but now multinational corporations threaten their livelihood.

In this intimate examination of the relationship between Indian filmmaker Nishtha Jain and her young maid, Lakshmi, Jain holds up a mirror to her own culture and the pervasive caste system that can still determine an individual’s fate in life.

Meet Telma, Eva, and Judith, three undocumented workers who toil as cooks, housekeepers, and even surrogate mothers — often at the expense of their own families — as they attempt to pursue their American dreams.

Women workers in Tijuana’s assembly factories tell their stories as they work to carve out lives of agency in a new and complicated century, revealing the transformation of a city and its people by globalization.